In a stereoscopic three-dimensional (3D) presentation, both in movies and still photography, it is a common practice to crop right- and/or left-eye image at the corresponding right- or left-eye edge, if an object that is supposed to appear in front of the screen or photograph touches that edge. This practice, which is meant to avoid depth conflicts in viewing the object, is usually called a floating window or floating edge, and is manually set.
However, when actually presented in a theatrical environment, the masking on either side of a screen may impinge on or mask the region in which a floating edge was to be displayed, thus destroying the purpose of adding the floating edge. The same situation can arise in a 3D video display, if a monitor is displaying an image less than the full raster of the original image content.
The restoration of the floating edge in the display environment or device must take into account the underlying image so that the floating edge does not impinge on foreground elements of the content. However, in a theatrical environment or for an individual 3D video display, a professionally set floating window adjustment is not practical, and these situations require automatic floating edge (or floating window) creation and/or adjustment.